This month I want to discuss the role of law in the Christian life. At the heart of Paul's good news message about Jesus Christ, is the doctrine of justification by faith. God accepts us when we believe in his Son--he accepts us as righteous on the basis of what Christ has done, not what we have done.
This is incredibly good news for those of us who know that we have messed up badly, and that we could never redeem ourselves, no matter how many good things we do. We know we can never make up for the fact that we have let God down--all we can do is rely on his mercy.
The good news is that God himself has guaranteed that mercy. He sent his Son to die for us. Because of Jesus' death for us, God remains righteous even though he declares the wicked to be justified (Rom. 4:5; 5:6). God presented Jesus "as a sacrifice of atonement ... to demonstrate his justice" in leaving sin unpunished (Rom. 3:25).
The death of Christ was a demonstration of God's justice--by it God has the right to forgive sin. In forgiving us, God does not just pretend that sin does not matter. Rather, he shows how much it matters by sending his Son to die for us, that is, by taking our sins upon himself. God has done everything that was needed to justify the ungodly--he does not violate his own righteousness when he declares us righteous and acceptable.
This is grace. Since Christ died for us, we can be forgiven. We are justified by faith (Acts 13:38; Rom. 3:22, 26; 4:24; 5:1). We are accepted by God as his children if we have faith in Jesus Christ. We don't deserve it, but it is guaranteed by God based on faith. The means of salvation is a gift of God (Eph. 2:8).
So far, so good, said some people in the first century. God brings you into his kingdom if you have faith. Now that you are here, they said, you should obey God. Specifically, you should obey the commandments he has given his people--clear commands regarding circumcision, festivals and Sabbaths.
This was the Galatian heresy: false teachers said that Christians had to have both the old and the new covenants, both Moses and Christ, both law and faith, both merit and grace. It was an emphasis on living by every word of God. It sounded logical, but it was fundamentally flawed.
Christians should obey God, but the Law of Moses is the wrong law. Paul says in Galatians that the Law of Moses is obsolete. Its authority has expired, and we are no longer "under the law." Paul goes so far as to say that the Mount Sinai covenant produced a religion of bondage (Gal. 4:24-25), but that Christians are free.
We are children of the promise, children of the free woman (3:29; 4:31). "It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery" (5:1). If you try to be justified by the law, then you will be alienated from Christ, and you will have fallen out of grace (verse 4). Paul emphasizes that we "were called to be free" (verse 13).
Paul's point is that we cannot be saved by any law. "If righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!" (Gal. 2:21). If a different law could have given us life, then God would have given us the life-giving law. But the very nature of law prevents it from giving us life. All a law can do is set forth requirements and prescribe penalties for failure.
Since we never achieve perfect obedience in this life, we can never look to law as a standard for salvation. We can never say, Grace covered my past sins, but now my salvation depends on my obedience. If that were true, we would all be doomed. Our acceptance with God is always on the basis of grace and faith, and never on the basis of our obedience.
What then is the role of law in a Christian's life? Christians do not "sin deliberately so grace may abound." Christians want to please the God who saved them. Sin caused our Savior to suffer and die, so we do not want to have anything to do with sin.
We want to obey God as best we can, even though we know we can't do it perfectly. We are obeying not because we earn anything through obedience, but because we love God and want to obey him.
Our relationship with God is based on faith, not a list of rules. It is a personal loyalty to God, a loyalty that leads us to obey, but a loyalty that always looks to God, not to a list of rules as a gauge of our relationship. We never boast of obedience, nor despair of falling short. God has already made sufficient provision for justifying us even when we were wicked and ungodly.
When people see laws only in terms of reward and punishment, they are naturally bewildered about the role of law when it is neither a basis of reward nor of punishment. Christ has removed it from such roles.
Why then should anybody obey? We need to reorient our thinking about law--away from thoughts of reward and punishment, away from a standard that we are measured by. We need to think of God's laws as a matter of personal loyalty, as integral and natural to a personal relationship.
God's law, which for us is the law of Christ (1 Cor. 9:21), provides forgiveness for every transgression (except that of rejecting Christ, naturally)--forgiveness obtained by faith, not by penance, not by good works, not by our paying a price (Rom. 3:28). This is not the kind of "law" we are used to.
Christianity is a belief in God's grace, in his love, in his promise and power to forgive and cleanse. God grants his children not only forgiveness of sin, but also a new life--a life in Christ.
Where once we lived for ourselves, now we live for Christ. And we do so because the Holy Spirit resides in us, not because we have suddenly become righteous ourselves.
The New Testament does give us rules and behavioral expectations, but these should be seen as the result of a faith relationship, not as the basis for it. They are not the measurement of our righteous standing before God--and that's good, because we all fall short.
We have no righteousness, but when we put our confidence in Christ, God counts us as righteous (Rom. 4:23-25). We have peace with God, not directly ourselves, but through Christ (Rom. 5:1-2).
There is now a new righteousness that God has made known (Rom. 3:21). It is a righteousness that does not come from the law. It is a righteousness that comes from God himself (verse 22).
This new righteousness comes from God through faith, to all who believe. Everyone is a sinner, and the only way we can have righteousness, the only way we can have peace with God, is by God giving it to us (verses 22-23).
Our righteousness, then, is not ours, it is Christ's. God attributes the righteousness of the only righteous human, Jesus, to us, if we believe. More than that, he works in us to live righteously. That is why the good that Christians do is called "fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16-26). It is done only because God lives in us. The fruit is his, not ours.
God produces the fruit of the Spirit in us because we have faith, not because we "try really hard" to be good. The root of righteous living, then, is faith. It is not personal virtue.
We strive to be found in Christ (Phil. 3:7-9), not to be found personally good. Christians, Paul says, are not pursuing a righteousness of our own that comes from the law, but the righteousness that comes from God through faith in Christ (verse 9). When we pursue loving God, our lives will naturally (because God is at work in us) begin to produce righteous fruit.
When our minds are set on knowing and loving Christ, the Spirit brings forth righteous fruit in us (Rom. 8:5). The way to righteousness is through faith, and faith is strengthened when we are spending our time with Christ. It is through Christ, and not through ourselves, that we fully meet the righteous requirements of the law (verses 3-4).
As Christ loved us, so we are to love one another (John 13:34-35). In this kind of love, the whole law is summed up (Gal. 5:14). That is why John sums up God's law for us, referred to by Paul as the law of Christ (1 Cor. 9:21), in the commands that we are to believe in Christ and love one another (1 John 3:23-24). Only when our trust rests in Christ can we love one another as he loved us.
It is only because we are in Christ that we can live righteously. And that is not because we can do so, but because he defeated sin for us. It is God who makes us stand firm in Christ (2 Cor. 1:20). All the glory is his because he has done it all.
When we are in close communion with Christ, we remember who we are and to whom we belong. We remember how destructive sin is, and that we have been set free from its power (Rom. 8:1-4). We are inclined to heed the prompting of the Spirit and follow his lead (verses 12-16).
Our minds are led by the Spirit when we are spending time with Christ. But when we put our minds on the things of the sinful nature, we forget that we belong to Christ, that he has defeated the power of sin for us, that we are saved and that God loves us. All those things remain true, but our ability to see and believe them becomes fogged in. In that condition, we are easy prey for the sinful nature.
We are no match for sin. It "so easily entangles" us, Hebrews 12:1 tells us. But when we are in Christ, the victory is already won. We do not have to let sin rule, because it no longer has any actual power over us.
How can we "throw off" sin? By keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus (verse 2), the author and perfecter of our faith. Our "feeble arms" and "weak knees" (verse 12) receive strength when our attention is kept on loving Christ.
That is why the spiritual disciplines such as Bible reading, prayer, meditation, simplicity, service and worship are so basic to the Christian life. These are means God has given us to stay tuned into the real truth about God and about ourselves: God loves us, we are his beloved children, he has saved us and he has freed us from the power of sin. Through such means, we remain close to God and have the courage to stand in the power of Christ's resurrection, power he has given to all his children (Rom. 8:10-11).
An excellent book I can recommend to you on the subject of the spiritual disciplines and their role in the Christian life is Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster (HarperSanFrancisco, 1978, 1988).
God's grace and power are wonderful beyond description, brothers and sisters. May we continually grow in our faithful walk with our Lord, Savior and Teacher, Jesus Christ.
Copyright © Worldwide Church of God, 1999